Bryan Danielson on WWE Talent Should Have 90-Day Notice Clause, AEW Contract, WWE & NJPW Talks

A recent episode of The MMA Hour podcast had Bryan Danielson as the guest. Some of the topics discussed included Danielson’s thoughts about WWE talent should have a 90-day notice clause for releases, the length of his AEW contract, WWE’s talks with New Japan Pro Wrestling, feeling “detached” with his matches in WWE, and more.

On the topic of WWE talent should have a 90-day notice clause for releases, Danielson stated:

“In some ways, I get it. In some ways, I feel like it’s not right. It’s hard because my father-in-law [John Laurinaitis] is head of talent relations and he is the one who has to call them all. One of the things that I’ve always had a hard time with, and I’ve been fired from WWE twice, so I kind of get this; it’s one thing if somebody does something bad. If you’re under contract and you’re not happy with the company, if they can fire you and give you 90 days, you should be able to give them 90 days to be released from your contract. On the flip side, if they’re only firing you because of budget cuts when they’re profitable than ever, I just don’t think that’s right.

They signed a lot of people behind contracts with AEW started to keep people from going to AEW then they realized, ‘AEW can’t sign all these people,’ so now the people that have too many high-end contracts, if they feel like they are getting paid more than they should be getting paid, they’ll let them go. You offered them a contract to be with you for three years, if you overpaid them, that’s your bad and you’re still a very profitable company. I wish they wouldn’t, but I also understand it’s business in America. Profits tend to be the most important things for companies You can even talk to the people within the company. I love Vince McMahon and have learned so much from him, but companies are not people. Corporation are their own people but for whatever reason, even good people make decisions that benefit a company that hurt the people that have worked so hard for the company. That’s hard on me mentally but it’s also the system that has been rewarded financially in the United States.

I kind of just accepted that that’s what it was, except now I work for AEW. Tony Khan, he’s only let go of three people since the pandemic started and they were all disciplinary reasons. Other people, who are no longer with the company, if he didn’t want them, their contract expired and they weren’t re-signed. That’s how he approaches it. Until I saw that and dealt with that, I always thought (WWE’s way) was unfair, but ‘it’s just the way wrestling is and it works,’ except Tony Khan came in and he doesn’t do that. AEW from a money standpoint makes way less money than WWE. Things like that led me to want to go to AEW as well.”

On the topic of his interest in working in NJPW, WWE’s talks with NJPW, and the length of his AEW contract NJPW, Danielson stated:

“Obviously, I have to clear it through AEW at first, they have to be my priority. Even going to Japan right now is hard with COVID and that stuff. I’m able to do that. To be fair, WWE was going to let me do that as well. With the contract they offered me and when I was talking to them, it was one of my big things of, I want to be able to go and wrestle these guys all over the world and they were going to allow me to do that …

When I signed this deal, [Brie Bella] and I were thinking it would be my last contract. What I’m kind of hoping is that I’m having so much fun and feeling so good, that by the end of the three years that I’ve worked so and had so many intense matches that my body doesn’t feel great. Like, repairable, if I stopped wrestling for six months my I’ll feel as good as new, but I’ll feel like, ‘Okay, now I’m kind of done being a full time wrestler.’ The hard part would be thinking, ‘Man, I still feel good,’ and I want to be a full-time wrestler, but because of age or wanting to be there for my kids, stepping away from being a full-time wrestler then would be a lot more difficult.”

On the topic of his decision to sign with AEW being partially due to him feeling too comfortable or detached with his match work in WWE, Danielson stated:

“There was something exciting about it and a little scary. You get too comfortable at something for too long and there was just something exciting about it. There was also this idea in my mind where, I tried not to and for the most part I didn’t, but in my WWE matches, I could go out there and kind of sleepwalk through them if I wanted to. I tried not to. In AEW, you can’t because they do so much. I was watching one of their shows and I was like, ‘I don’t even know if I can wrestle here. These guys are doing so much. I think this might be dangerous for me.’ I had mentioned it to Jon Moxley and I said that to him and he said, ‘Dude, you’re Bryan Danielson, you can do any of this. You don’t have to do what these guys are doing, you can create your own thing.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, & 3